TEACHING STEPHEN KING Horror, the Supernatural, and New Approaches to Literature
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TEACHING STEPHEN KING Horror, the Supernatural, and New Approaches to Literature ALISSA BURGER Teaching Stephen King This page intentionally left blank Teaching Stephen King Horror, the Supernatural, and New Approaches to Literature Alissa Burger Palgrave macmillan TEACHING STEPHEN KING Copyright © Alissa Burger 2016 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2016 978-1-137-48390-4 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission. In accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. First published 2016 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of Nature America, Inc., One New York Plaza, Suite 4500, New York, NY 10004-1562. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. ISBN 978-1-349-69469-3 E-PDF ISBN: 978-1-137-48391-1 DOI: 10.1057/9781137483911 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Burger, Alissa. Title: Teaching Stephen King : horror, the supernatural, and new approaches to literature / Alissa Burger. Description: New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2015030906 | Subjects: LCSH: King, Stephen, 1947—Study and teaching | BISAC: EDUCATION / Curricula. | EDUCATION / Language Experience Approach. | EDUCATION / Teaching Methods & Materials / Arts & Humanities. | SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural. | SOCIAL SCIENCE / Media Studies. Classification: LCC PS3561.I483 Z6225 2016 | DDC 813/.54—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015030906 For my students This page intentionally left blank Contents Acknowledgments ix 1 Why Teach King? 1 Section I: Variations on Classic Horror Tropes 2 The Vampire 11 3 The Werewolf 27 4 The “Thing Without a Name” 43 5 The Ghost 59 Section II: Real Life Horror 6 Rage 73 7 Sexual Violence 87 8 Coming of Age Stories 103 Section III: Playing with Publishing 9 Serial Publishing and The Green Mile 121 10 Ebooks 137 11 Graphic Novels 153 12 Conclusion 171 Notes 177 Works Cited 187 Index 205 This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgments While the author’s name is the only one that appears on the cover, no one writes a book alone, and many people have contributed to the writing of this one. First, without the inestimable work of Stephen King, my class and this book wouldn’t exist. Reading King and talking about it with students—and having that be just another day at the office!—are a pleasure and a privilege I’m grateful for every day. As long as he keeps writing, I’m happy to be counted among his Constant Readers. I am also lucky to have the support and encouragement of a number of excellent colleagues and friends. Megan Welsh, Stephanie Mix, and Brandi Grahlman looked at early drafts of some of these chapters and their ques- tions, feedback, and suggestions were immensely helpful. I worked with an excellent group of editors at Palgrave Macmillan and Amnet. Thank you, Mara Berkoff, Sarah Nathan, Rachel Crawford, Milana Vernikova, and Jennifer Crane. My family, both near and far, continue to encourage and inspire me. A book has a way of taking small—and not so small—nips of time out of days spent with those we love. Thank you for your love, patience, and continued support, and for not complaining when you get King books for Christmas so I can pick your brain later. I love you. When I get too far into a project or struggle with the inevitable frustrat- ing bits, Jason Burger is there to pull me back out into the real world. I love you and I couldn’t do it without you. Finally, thank you to my students. At its best, teaching is a collaborative effort, an interactive process of critical thinking, discussion, and debate. Thank you for reading, for coming to class prepared, for your questions and your insights. Every day, every semester, I feel lucky to have the chance to spend that time with you, reading and talking, hearing your thoughts and learning together. Thank you for being my comrades in literature and my fellow Constant Readers. This book wouldn’t be possible without you. 1 Why Teach King? s of 2015, Stephen King has published more than fifty books andevery “ Asingle one [of his novels] has spent time on the best-seller list” (Cowles, emphasis original). His books have sold over 350 million copies and according to Forbes, King “earned $45 million in the 2007–2008 fiscal year alone” (Keneally). He is a household name, synonymous with contemporary horror, and his work has inspired over one hundred film and television adaptations, ranging from excellent—such as the Frank Darabont-directed The Shawshank Redemption (1994) and The Green Mile (1999)—to awful and even downright inexplicable, like the profusion of Children of the Corn sequels. King’s popularity and mass-marketability are undeniable. However, popularity does not necessarily denote literary merit and bestseller status does not ensure an author’s work entry to the academic discussion or the high school or college classroom. So why teach King? The Debate In the last few years, King has begun to achieve the type of literary valida- tion and accolades that had escaped him for the majority of his prolific and otherwise successful career. As Jane Ciabattari writes in “Is Stephen King a Great Writer?”, “the respect of the literary establishment has always evaded King. For years, the question of whether he was a serious writer was answered by a quick tabulation of book sales, film deals, income, and sheer volume of output, which added up to a resounding ‘no.’ Commercial triumph did not equal literary value. Being a bestseller was anathema.” The perception of King’s literary merit began to shift when King was awarded the National Book Foundation’s medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 2003 and named Grandmaster by the Mystery Writ- ers of America in 2007, though as J. Madison Davis writes, “Neither award came without controversy” (16). As David D. Kirkpatrick wrote of King 2 TEACHING STEPHEN KING being recognized for his Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, this “is the first time that the organization, the National Book Foundation, has awarded its medal to an author best known for writing in popular genres like horror stories, science fiction, or thrillers. Very little of Mr. King’s work would qualify as literary fiction.” This elite definition of the literary left many critics combative and dismissive of King’s award and within the ranks of the genre fiction so easily dismissed by Kirkpatrick, there was also some resis- tance to King’s being named a Grandmaster. As Madison explains, King’s work arguably expands beyond the scope of the traditional boundaries of the mystery genre and “King clearly writes stories of sensation and usu- ally includes the supernatural, which is exactly why some mystery writers and readers have grumbled in private about his being granted Grandmaster status” (19). At the core of both of these discussions is one of definition, an inclusion or exclusion based on what “counts,” either as literary fiction in the former or as true mystery in the latter. While the often contentious discussion of whether or not King should be accepted into these hallowed halls rages on, he continues to transcend and trespass genre boundaries, pushing out of the clearly demarcated “horror” box within which many of his critics have penned him, as was recently demonstrated anew when his 2014 novel Mr. Mercedes won the Edgar Award for crime writing. Most recently, in September 2015, President Barack Obama presented King with the National Medal of Arts, honoring King as “one of the most popular and prolific writers of our time [who] combines his remarkable storytelling with his sharp analysis of human nature” (“President Obama to Bestow”). Despite critical objections to King being considered a “literary” writer, his popularity and growing prestige are undeniable. The debate over King’s literary merit has been going on for decades, almost since the publication of his first novelCarrie in 1974, and its most recent incarnation played out in the pages of The Los Angeles Review of Books, between Dwight Allen and Sarah Langan, beginning with Allen’s “My Stephen King Problem: A Snob’s Notes.” King has often been dismissed out of hand as “just” a genre writer and in this assessment his popularity has frequently been marshaled against him on the argument that fiction that appeals to the masses cannot be simultaneously literary. These familiar criti- cisms are part of Allen’s rejection of King, as he questions why “some people in the literary business regard this extremely successful writer of genre fiction as a first-rate writer of literary fiction, a ‘major’ contributor to American lit- erary culture? . [D]o we believe that commercial success on the King scale signifies, almost by definition, quality, the way a 20,000 square-foot house supposedly signifies to passersby that the owners must be important?” Allen also defends the type of writing he sees as truly “literary”—which by defi- nition, within Allen’s argument, King is empathically not—explaining that WHY TEACH KING? 3 “Among the things I hope for when I open a book of fiction is that each sen- tence I read will be right and true and beautiful .